Film Review: Olivia Wilde stars in Deadfall — 3 stars

Crime doesn’t pay — unless you’re making a movie, in which case the more malefactors the better. With Deadfall, Viennese director Stefan Ruzowitzky (The Counterfeiters) introduces us first to a pair of baddies, then a lone joker, all of whom will eventually collide in the same full house.

The setting is a wintry northern state. The film was shot in Quebec, but is clearly going for a just-down-the-road-from-Fargo look. Brother-and-sister criminals Addison and Liza (Eric Bana, Olivia Wilde) have just knocked over a casino and are almost scot-free when their car hits a deer and rolls off the road. The first cop to arrive on the scene gets a bullet for his troubles, after which the sibs split up, hoping to make it to Canada on foot.

Meanwhile, professional pugilist Jay (Charlie Hunnam) has just been released from prison, and gets into a fight with the boxing promoter who put him there. When he hits the man and possibly kills him, he takes to the road as well, eventually picking up a hitchhiking Liza.

The script from first-timer Zach Dean then shuffles back and forth between stories. Addison, who’s definitely having the worst time of any of the characters, loses a finger in a backwoods scuffle and is forced to perform a self-cauterization. (We’re forced to watch.) Liza finds herself reluctantly falling for the kindly Jay, going so far as to tell him that their meeting is right out of an old movie. Or in this case a new one.

It turns into a neck-and-neck race between creativity and cliché. On the one hand, an unlikely number of the characters (including Kate Mara as a state trooper) have daddy issues. On the other, Kris Kristofferson and Sissy Spacek turn in some nice work as Jay’s salt-of-the-earth parents. Somewhere in the middle is the Liza-Jay love affair, which seems to catch fire faster than sawdust.

Unfortunately, Bana’s character proves to be the film’s undoing, when he turns into one of those charming, chatty psychopaths that screenwriters so love. (See Hannibal Lecter, Matthew McConaughey in Killer Joe, or just about anyone in Seven Psychopaths.) It doesn’t help that the movie’s climax takes place around a Thanksgiving dinner table, with Addison barking orders for everyone to offer thanks and please pass the pumpkin pie.

Cinematographer Shane Hurlbut gets great mileage out of the film’s snowy locations. There’s more than one snowmobile chase, and a lot of blood artfully splashed on the ice as the body count piles up. And Mara does a great job as a feisty cop whose commanding officer (Treat Williams) won’t cut her any slack, in spite of the fact that he’s her dad.

There’s enough solid acting in Deadfall to smooth over most of the screenwriter’s sins. And if you like your movie-weather to match what’s outside, this wintry thriller should provide just the chill you’re looking for.

Deadfall opens Dec. 7 in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary, with other cities to follow.